Jens begins his web developer career at the small web agency Promotion24 in Varel, Germany. He later labels the responsibilities during these times, or the quality of his work, as those of a web decorator.

August 2000

July 2001

Jens specializes in complex multi-client web applications at Unified Messaging company CANBOX in Oldenburg. He designs, codes, and manages the communication services of around 20 different partners, including Audi, FAZ, and Ciao.

April 2001

March 2008

Jens founds his own web development and consulting bureau, erde3, which he runs as a side business. He later rebrands the business under his own name, perhaps aptly “Meiert Web Development & Consulting.”

Jens launches UITest.com, a link hub for web development resources and tools that also offers a shortcut to a range of website checks, Site Check. The project’s applauded by accessibility specialists WebAIM and Juicy Studio and, within the following decade, builds a strong following amounting to about 200,000 monthly visits (as of December 2013).

February 2004

In the same month, Jens joins the IxDA (Interaction Design Association). During the first two years he supports the IxDA as the team lead for the German website but then switches to a quieter membership, now (as of February 2014) on the brink of fading out.

June 2004

December 2009

Jens enters the German Chapter of the UPA (Usability Professionals’ Association). He contributes to the success of the chapter by helping with the organization of the Munich Usability Days 2004 and 2005, giving talks, and sponsoring.

July 2004

Jens is the lead web developer behind the relaunch of the website of GMX, one of Europe’s largest online communication services. Internationally, the relaunch is one of the first of this size (>1 billion monthly page impressions) to be based on valid HTML and CSS code.

From joining GMX in 2003 until his departure in 2006, Jens works both on making GMX’s and United Internet’s frontend code valid, scalable, and multi-client-ready as well as setting up corporate policies like GMX’s HTML and CSS guidelines.

Jens’s first book gets released, Webdesign mit CSS (O’Reilly). He owes Ingo Helmdach, the book’s designer, that the examples are pleasant enough to be looked at.

November 2005

April 2007

Jens joins the board of the Webkrauts, an association of leading German web designers and developers. An almost-founder, he works on strategic and organizational matters and writes a number of articles before he withdraws his engagement.

Jens complements Aperto, Berlin’s staff as a lead frontend developer. He guides the implementation of government and corporate websites, whether Auswärtiges Amt (Germany’s State Department) or Stiftung Warentest, and, together with Timo Wirth, is responsible for internal coding standards.

October 2006

Jens launches the “CSS experiment disguised as net art” project The World’s Highest Website (WHWS). One of several test balloons he ignites over the years, WHWS is a commercial success accumulating more than one million visitors in only its first three months, and several hundreds of dollars of ad revenue, an accomplishment given the site’s nature. Very international, WHWS continues to attract a wide audience.

May 2007

Jens becomes Invited Expert in W3C’s HTML Working Group. He contributes to HTML there similar to how he contributes to HTML on the WHATWG side or for CSS then again at the W3C: by reviewing, commenting, and translating here and there.

Jens joins Google in Zurich, Switzerland, as a webmaster. He develops Google’s first HTML/CSS framework and focuses on coding standards, quality control, as well as education and outreach, beside implementing projects for Google’s Marketing, Legal, and Policy departments. In February 2010 he transfers to Mountain View, United States, where he steps up his work even further and soon gets promoted to Senior level.

April 2008

Jens, known for a preference for tailored technical solutions, pushes HTML code optimization by publicly attacking the otherwise undisputed “no omission of tags” boundary (and becoming notorious for it). The techniques he succeeds—or tries—to introduce at Google, whether the omission of optional tags, the—where valid—leaving out of attribute value quotes, the use of protocol-less URLs, but also CSS-guided debugging, contribute to modernizing the ways of writing HTML.

October 2008

Jens launches the Code Responsibly initiative, on paper co-sponsored by the Webkrauts. Code Responsibly serves the goal of increasing code quality in web development by donating a simple mantra and offering short guidelines.

September 2009

Jens commits to Smashing Magazine’s “Smashing Editorial Panel.” In the following years he primarily critiques articles (and also gets critiqued in a few attempts to publish more Smashing Magazine articles himself).

February 2010

Jens becomes one of the five website jurors of Design Made in Germany. In the course of the next years does he, with great pleasure, review a quarter of a billion quite fine German websites.

October 2010

Jens becomes a vegetarian for the second time (after 1999), now for good. He deems the industrial breeding of animals torture, industrial killing barbaric, and the idea that men need to eat animals retarded.

Jens becomes a member of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and a year later of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). He joins and supports both organizations in the belief that more is necessary to regain, maintain, and extend our rights than onlooking, though he still owes the rights movement more tangible action.

Jens runs the travel-documentation-photo-art tumblog Animated Traffic. The idea an accident, the project soon grows in size and artistic pretense. (At the same time he starts contributing dolled-up photos for A Dog A Day, but he doesn’t want to advertise this much.)

February 2015

Jens and O’Reilly issue The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks. The book reflects, in compressed form, Jens’s many years of experience architecting web frameworks, how to best develop, but also to use them.

April 2015

Jens asks whether we have stopped killing yet. We have to be more respectful towards life, and as with torture and rape it must be considered mentally ill to even suggest to take someone’s life. Especially when coming from people of authority.

June 2015

Jens can’t resist the urge to try that, too, and publishes the bulk of his web development and web design articles in book form: On Web Development gets released.

August 2015

Seeking some form of closure, Jens revives his 2013–2015 world travels in a book: Journey of J.—Around the World in 557 Days, 1,017 Photos, and 291 Personal Notes makes for a unique account of the impressions, experiences, and insights made.

Jens picks up an old hoax and turns a newspaper ad into a charity project: It’s not too late to send $1 is born. With ten organizations, some of them officially welcoming the initiative, the artsy campaign is slow catching on.

May 2016

Jens documents his belief in self-help by glossing over some basic aspects of the work one can do on oneself in another brief book: How to Work on Oneself.

September 2016

If there’s a particular thing to aim for when developing and maintaining websites, then it’s quality. What constitutes quality and how it’s measured and improved is something Jens covers in another “Little Book” with O’Reilly: The Little Book of Website Quality Control.